Teens Prefer Liquor To Beer, Hate Wine

By consumeristcarey July 29, 2007

The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report claims that teens prefer bourbon, rum, scotch, whiskey, and vodka to beer. Why should you care? Regulators and policy makers use the statistics to develop beverage-specific measures to combat underage drinking, “including increasing alcohol excise taxes and increasing restrictions on the distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages.” The CDC studied high schoolers in Nebraska, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming, and found the following:

In all four states, liquor was the most prevalent type of alcoholic beverage usually consumed among students who reported current alcohol use, ranging from 34.1% in Nebraska to 44.7% in Arkansas. The second most prevalent type of alcohol usually consumed was either beer or malt beverages (beer in Nebraska, malt beverages in Arkansas, and beer and malt beverages nearly equally in New Mexico and Wyoming). Wine was the least prevalent type of alcohol usually consumed in all four states, ranging from 1.6% in Arkansas and Wyoming to 3.1% in New Mexico.

The CDC has two common-sense explanations for liquor’s popularity: it gets teens drunk faster, and it can be mixed with “other beverages such as soft drinks.”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest disagrees with the CDC’s conclusions and believes liquor’s popularity can be chalked up to clever marketing:

Think of the dull amber, brown, and clear bottles in liquor stores of yesterday and compare that to the bright pinks, neon blues, and girly greens that characterize hard liquor today. Today’s infantilized liquors are flavored with peach, raspberry, mango, cherry, grape and every other kid-friendly flavor under the sun: Hypnotiq. Smirnoff Blueberry. DeKuyper Pineapple Coconut, Sour Apple, or Tropical Mango schnapps. Pink Grapefruit flavored Hiram Walker? Please.

Which argument regulators accept will make the difference between higher sin taxes or tightened restrictions on advertising. What do you think? Are teens after efficiency or pretty colors?

Types of Alcoholic Beverages Usually Consumed by Students in 9th–12th Grades — Four States, 2005 [CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report via the CSPI]
(Photo: jenerally speaking)

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Comments

  1. mac-phisto says:
    July 30, 2007 at 3:51 am

    first drink at the age of 14 – a pint of scotch. i drank the whole damn bottle & then spent the rest of the nite heaving. as others have stated, it was efficient, cheap (<$5) & easy to hide.

    i don’t think it’s wise to totally dispel the impact of marketing, though. i doubt the alluring colors of hypnotiq & the like have a very large impact, but spend a few hours in front of prime time tv & you’re bound to see a load of hip advertising from liquor manufacturers. they all feature young, attractive kids having loads of fun b/c of the captain, smirnoff, stoli – as i write this, i’m watching the fifth tangueray rangpur commercial i’ve seen tonite.

    drinking is cool. no legislation is going to change that.

  2. savvy9999 says:
    July 30, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    Went back to my university for homecoming last year. Stopped in at my favorite old bar, to see my old friend Frank, the owner/bartender. Ordered a pitcher of lager. “Can’t have one, don’t sell it anymore,” he said. Flabbergasted, I was. It was my mother’s milk in college. “Kids don’t drink beer any more. They drink liquor, to get f***ed up quick, and not get fat. Causes a lot of problems since they usually can’t handle it. But I gotta do what I gotta do to stay in business.”

    So it goes.

  3. TCameron says:
    July 30, 2007 at 2:00 pm

    I always preferred G&T’s, they pair nicely with a tweed jacket. Cheers, mates!

    T

  4. theblackdog says:
    July 30, 2007 at 2:22 pm

    Clearly the teens they surveyed are teens who are getting money from mommy and daddy. If they talked to college students, espcially those who had to pay their own way, they would favor beer.

    Also, the teens are probably just looking to get drunk, hence why they hit the hard stuff rather than the beer.

  5. erica.blog says:
    August 1, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    The Center for Science in the Public Interest isn’t being very scientific. Does it matter what the marketing is and what the liquor store shelves look like? The majority of teens don’t get their alcohol in liquor stores.

    I had underage interns bugging me to buy them booze (and being very disappointed to learn I was only 20 myself), they wanted wine (cheap, boxed) and liquor, and they wanted it because they would be very drunk very quickly. That was a pretty dull summer, watching them get plotzed every night…

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